


The Risks of Falling

by Mr_Heck (J_Lucy_Daisuke)



Category: Lupin III
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 12:40:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4479596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Lucy_Daisuke/pseuds/Mr_Heck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Goemon makes a poor choice by following Jigen one night, Jigen makes a poor choice by making a go of a mission on his own, and Zenigata realizes that he's made more poor choices than he'd like to admit. Features charactersxOCs, crude language, violence, sexual situations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Risks of Falling

**Author's Note:**

> The started out as a dare between friends, and became a great distraction to me all this week. Thank you so much, L.! :D

It’d been years. Zenigata hated to admit it to himself, but it had been literal years. Not the figurative ones like he moaned about his lengthy divorce being (it had only taken two months; she had drawn up the paperwork while he was away), but literal ones, like his marriage had been (five, to be exact—more than her mother had guessed at two).  
It had started off with a nice enough conversation while attempting to get to know his coworkers. His yearly review had complained about his lack of enthusiasm when it came to knowing them—All of those years and he only missed a perfect score because he thought the company holiday parties were for “jackasses and shmucks”. Well, maybe that and the part about the attitude…  
The conversation around a younger coworker’s desk had trailed from weekend plans to past weekend plans to dates.  
“So Koichi, where’s your lady at?” a young blond man smirked.  
Koichi. They all called him that now. Where had manners gone? Zenigata looked down into his black gruel that passed for coffee and murmured to himself.  
“Eh?” another young man leaned inward. “What?”  
“I said I don’t have one!” Zenigata snapped, downing the rest of his coffee and crumpling the cup in his hand.  
“Explains the tension,” snorted the man whose desk they all had gathered around.  
“Watch your ass!” Zenigata growled, and the seated man shot his hands up immediately.  
“Woah, woah! Calm down! Just joking!”  
“So you never married, Koichi?”  
“I did. Once. But you all were still chasing tail in high school at that point.” Although it was probably ten years before the men around him were even in high school, he thought glumly.  
“Any ladies since then?”  
“Who has the time?”  
“Well… Most of us…” the blond man was cautious about his answer, and cleared his throat. “You know, I think Ken’s grandma is a widow now.”  
“How OLD do you think I am?!” the inspector demanded.  
“I want to answer that but I also don’t want to die,” the man gulped.  
“Have you thought about online dating?”  
“What?” Zenigata straightened his defensive posture and furrowed his brow. “Like in the newspapers?”  
“I guess? Hey, Tim, let’s make him a profile!”  
“Already on it,” Tim chuckled and bumped away the seated man from his spot at the computer.  
“W-What?! No, don’t!” Zenigata began to flail and reach for Tim’s throat while being pulled back by two of the men gathered around him. This ceased as he saw photos of the women flash on the screen. Smiling, holding hands, dressed to the nines. “W-Wait? They’re on there?”  
“Ones like them,” Tim turned around and shrugged. “Now what’s your height?”  
“Imperial or standard?”  
“Dude, I don’t know just give me a number.”  
“Five nine. Weight… One sixty.”  
“Age….?”  
“Urm…”  
“We’ll go back to that. How about hobbies?”  
Zenigata blinked and thought.  
That might need a little mulling over, too.

******  
Jigen nearly dropped his gun when the silence of the home in the French countryside was torn apart by Lupin’s long and loud chuckle. He couldn’t see the thief from his sport on the couch, save for a pair of broken-in Italian dress shoes kicking up and down as the laughter continued.  
“The hell? You looking at cat videos again or something?”  
“No! No. This is even better!” Lupin reassured him, turning the laptop around to face Jigen.  
“You did a search on Zenigata?”  
“Of course! It’s how I find all of the best articles about me!” he sat up on the couch and motioned for Jigen to join him, which the gunman did, laying his piece down on the coffee table while lifting up his fedora to get a better look at the website.  
“The hell am I looking at here?”  
“Old Man Zenigata’s gotten himself a dating profile!” Lupin exclaimed excitedly. “Looks like he’s put on a little weight… And lost five years on his age. Tsk tsk Pops, that’s not the inspector I know!”  
“The hell’s up with that picture?” Jigen pointed at the screen. It was Zenigata seated at a table in a Hawaiian shirt with a posture that made Jigen think the shirt was made out of sandpaper.  
“When they made him take a vacation a few years ago, I’m thinking… Oh, oh this is rich. Read the hobbies listed here.”  
“Fishing, pottery—Competitive ballroom?” Jigen snorted hard enough that it hurt, and he found himself clutching his nose.  
“This is great. Oh Old Man, you finally decided we never would be, huh?”  
“Heh. Hey, Lupin, scroll down a little bit on that.”  
“Huh?”  
“Just do it!” Jigen muttered, motioning at the screen until Lupin did so, scrolling through the various profiles. “Click on that one.”  
“What, this guy? What, are you lonely too?”  
“W-What? Don’t play around! Just go on it!”  
“Fine… What’s the big deal on this one, anyway?” Jigen slid the laptop off of Lupin’s lap and scrolled through it.  
“Nothin’,” Jigen just as quickly shut the laptop and rose off of the couch. “I gotta go out for a little bit. Out of cigarettes.”  
“Weren’t you trying that vaping thing for a little while?”  
“I kept having this fear I’d mistake it for the gun or vice versa. I’ll be back later.”  
“Wait! I’ve got our next heist all lined up!”  
“You’ll have to fill me in on it later, okay? I just gotta go,” Jigen adjusted his hat and slid out of the way just as Fujiko walked through the door of the small cottage.  
“What’s he all riled up about?”  
“Who knows. More importantly, what are you going to do to rile me all up?” Lupin adjusted his posture on the couch, spreading his legs apart slightly, and Fujiko answered this by placing one of her sharp high heels in the spot between them, hovering millimeters over it.  
“Well you’re no fun,” he ran a hand up her leg, and had nearly made it up her skirt when she began to press. He yelped and held up both of his hands, and she gave a satisfied smile as she took a seat next to him.  
“So about this heist. A movie? If you’re that bored I can just give you the password to my Netflix, you know.”  
“Not just any movie. Are you familiar with Orson Welles at all?”  
“Of course. “Rosebud” and all that, right?”  
“Right! Well, recently it became known that one of Welles’s missing films is in fact alive, complete, and well. Thanks to a director. A mister Hammond Von Dyer. ”  
“Von Dyer? Now that name’s a little harder to place.”  
“From the Netherlands originally, but now mainly lives outside of Paris. Total lunatic when it comes to his movies. If you could shoot actors who couldn’t remember their lines this guy would probably be the biggest headhunter of them all. People have gone literally insane shooting movies with him,” Lupin had opened his laptop once again and scrolled over a news article to show Fujiko. This was complete with a photo of Von Dyer, a stern and high cheekboned blond man with a black turtleneck and thin lips forced into a scowl that looked fairly permanent.  
“That Welles film could be worth millions to the right collector.”  
“People and their hobbies.”  
“Oh you should talk. I’ve seen your purse collection, Fujiko,” Lupin chuckled. “We’re going to need you to get in there.”  
“I’m taking sixty percent if that’s the case.”  
“W-What?!” Lupin yelped and tossed aside the laptop. “Sixty?!”  
“Lupin if he makes his actors go insane can you imagine what he’d do to someone in bed?”  
“We can always run a few scenarios!” but his attempt to embrace her was met with a hand to his face.  
Fujiko stood up from her spot on the couch and sighed, having busied herself with looking at her cell phone, “Now you know my terms so you should know that you have until sunset to decide. If not I’m on my way to the beach. There’s a pool boy there with my name on it.”  
Lupin let out a whimper as she left whistling to herself, and he glanced over at his laptop, “…I wonder if there’s a site for people looking for new henchmen.”

******  
The tea had been wonderful, nearly as fine as the weather. It wasn’t Japan, but Goemon was appreciative of all that France had to offer him. He sat alone at the café table with his sword at his side, and gratefully accepted another cup of tea that the waitress poured for him. He’d even ventured out into eating a croissant. While a bit rich for his liking, he wasn’t wholly against eating it again. There was a part of him that was sad at how proud he was for venturing out of his comfort zone.  
“No one will ever know,” he swore to himself as he sipped his tea. He looked up from the cup long enough just to see a familiar lanky body in a wrinkled suit walk down the street of the town. He was more hunched over that usual, and if his hat had been any further down over his eyes he would have been blinded by it.  
Goemon instinctively reached for his sword as he noticed the pacing, grabbed onto it as Jigen looked down at his watch, and silently bolted when Jigen cut down a nearby alleyway.  
This was followed by a brief return as he laid down his money on the table and tucked away the rest of his croissant for later.  
Jigen had climbed into the back of a black car, Goemon noted as he watched from the roof of the café. It quickly sped off down the street, and Goemon was just as quick to follow after it on the rooftops.  
It wasn’t that far from where Lupin had been staying, Goemon noted, and then just as quickly remembered he’d missed a meeting about a heist. Something about a movie. This was not matter to Goemon now, what mattered more to him was staking out the hotel the car had pulled into.  
“So you’re betraying us…” Goemon narrowed his eyes as he watched another man climb out from the driver’s side. At first he thought it was Lupin, but on second glance he realized this man was too short, and had an outfit that didn’t sport nearly as much color clashing.  
Goemon was perched outside of the window when the two walked into it. He had his hand on his sword, prepared to make his entrance and punish the one he had called his friend until recently.  
Instead he found himself frozen as he watched inside the room, his eyes growing wider and his brain not processing what was happening quickly enough. He thought at first Jigen was grabbing the man… But this wasn’t aggressive, this was more of… Then Jigen’s hat then fell to the ground as the man in turn tossed him back onto the bed, but this also didn’t look like the act of someone in the middle of battle. Jigen didn’t put up any sort of a struggle when the man climbed on top of him and then proceeded to remove the tie around the gunman’s neck, and then toss it aside on the floor.  
Goemon’s stunned viewing was only disrupted when he slipped off the small balcony and into the shrubs below.  
Wait. These weren’t shrubs.  
Bougainvillea. Spiny, thorny bougainvillea.

******  
No messages yet. Zenigata huffed a sigh and busied himself with the spring cleaning of his desk. With all of the chasing Lupin, he certainly did allow the dust to build up…  
He’d only made it to sorting through his pens when he found himself checking the website again for any hits.  
“Hey!” it was one of the coworkers who roped him into this fiasco in the first place. Zenigata felt himself jump and quickly exited off of the website. “Any luck, Koichi?”  
“Oh yeah! You know, loads!”  
“That’s great! You already look happier!” he gave Zenigata thumbs up, which the inspector shakily returned, and Zenigata slumped over his desk as soon as the coast was clear.  
“Happier? This is taking the years off of my life Lupin hasn’t grabbed!” Zenigata replied in a grumble.  
“Excuse me?” he tilted his head and immediately rose from his spot as he found he was not alone. The woman who had called out to him smiled and gave a polite wave, and pushed up her glasses. “I was wondering if I could borrow a pen.”  
She was maybe late thirties—Possibly new to the office? With near-black hair that matched her eyes and brown skin. Her outfit made her fit in perfectly with the rest of the office-Black blazer and pencil skirt, high heels to help with how short she was—It as no wonder he would have missed her in the past.  
“Oh! Yeah. Um. Here,” Zenigata rifled through the cup at his desk before producing a blue one, “That work?”  
“Great! Thanks!” she replied. “You’re a lifesaver. I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before. Are you new, or did you get here while I was out?”  
“I’ve… Been here for years…”  
“Oh! You must be one of ghosts!”  
“Ghosts?”  
“Yeah. They don’t really spend a lot of time here getting to know anyone because they’re always out of the office. You’re Japanese?”  
“Right…” he cleared his throat. “You’re…?”  
“American. Wait. Shadi. My name’s Shadi,” she held out a hand to him. “And you’re…?”  
“Inspector Zenigata.”  
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Inspector,” she held out an envelope that she had used the pen he’d given her to write his name on. “You’ve been served by your ex-wife. She’ll see you in court. Have a good rest of your day.”  
And she walked off, leaving a stunned office and a stunned-silent Zenigata.

******  
“What in the hell happened to you?!” Lupin was aghast at the Goemon he found in front of him. The thorns had taken their toll on the samurai, leaving him cut and scratched. But this was a mere coda to the haunted expression the samurai wore as he shuffled in past Lupin.  
This version of Goemon was only forgotten when Jigen walked in with a small grin on.  
“At least someone had a good night!” Lupin laughed, and Jigen only smirked knowingly from beneath his fedora as he stretched out on the couch. Lupin leaned over and grinned. “So what’s her name? When’s the wedding? Can I be a flower girl?”  
“Get away and just let me enjoy the quiet!” Jigen grumbled, waving his fedora away from Lupin as he stretched out on the couch.  
“Fine… That cheerful stride sure didn’t last long.” Lupin rose from his seat and tugged on his red jacket. “It just so happens I was getting ready to go off and have a little pre-heist fun.”  
“Heh. Have a good time,” Jigen waved Lupin off nonchalantly before he began the search for his lighter. He finally found it and thought at last it would be the perfect time for a cigarette.  
That was until the end of Goemon’s sword lifted the brim of his hat off of his eyes.  
“The hell? You tried to save another stray kitten, didn’t you? I’m not taking you to the hospital for cat scratch fever this time.”  
“Where were you?” Goemon demanded.  
“Corner of none of your damn business and back the hell off,” Jigen replied, shoving his hat back down over his eyes. “Why the hell do you want to know?”  
“I—” he couldn’t admit to following. It would make him come off as “creepy,” which Fujiko had already warned him about. He felt his cheeks start to grow red as he looked for an answer.  
This was why he was a muscle guy, not a talking guy.  
“Um… I was having tea and saw you cut down an alley and get into a car. I initially thought… You’d betrayed us, so… I followed to investigate.”  
Now he had Jigen’s attention. He had Jigen’s full and undivided attention. In an instant Goemon found himself pressed against the couch he’d been thrown on with Jigen’s gun pressed to his forehead, while he himself had drawn his blade and held it close against Jigen’s throat.  
Jigen’s breathing was heavy as he looked into Goemon’s eyes, and Goemon knew that look. Jigen was contemplating whether or not he should waste the bullet.  
Instead, Goemon watched as Jigen slowly backed off of him, set the gun down on the coffee table, and slumped down with his arms resting on his knees and his hands covering his face.  
“How long did you follow me for?”  
“To the hotel… I left once you two arrived at the room and I realized that you… Weren’t betraying us…” Goemon said with a clearing of the throat as he sheathed his sword once more.  
Jigen stood up from the couch, paced quietly for a moment, and with one large exclamation of “God DAMMIT!” punched at the closest wall he could find in the French cottage, leaving a substantial hole in it.  
Goemon soon found himself helping Jigen bandaging his busted knuckles in the kitchen and occasionally looking back to the living room and the painting they’d moved so it would cover the hole.  
“Why not say something?” Goemon inquired as he continued to rub alcohol on the bloody knuckles while Jigen winced.  
“I’m sorry that doesn’t come up more in conversation. Oh hey, Boss, what’d you have for dinner? By the way I totally just got my rocks off with the waiter not an hour ago.”  
“So the women…?”  
“Everything with them’s been legit, too. People like both sometimes. Guess I’m greedy like that.”  
“Why not say something to Lupin? He’s not exactly puritan.”  
Here Jigen fell silent as Goemon applied the bandages to the gunman’s hand, only stopping to look upward for his answer.  
“I… I’m done talking about this… Listen, we just didn’t talk about this shit when I was growing up, all right? We just kept quiet and if anyone found out they kept their goddamn mouths shut. Which is what I’m hoping will happen here. Goemon, I need you to keep quiet about this, all right? You gotta promise me you’ll keep your trap shut about me.”  
“…You have my word. But I still think you should tell Lupin.”  
“Agree to disagree. OW! Not so tight! Dammit.”  
“I’m not the one who took out his rage on the poor wall.”  
“Ass…”

******  
It had taken a bit of searching—And actually booting up his computer—But Zenigata found it. He sat alone in a darkened Interpol offices sipping his cup of stale coffee and cackling. So she had outstanding parking tickets.  
Out. Standing.  
It was sunrise by the time Shadi walked down from her apartment to find the inspector overseeing the booting of her car while grinning.  
“W-What are you doing?!” she demanded as she rushed up to him, her bags and bagel for breakfast still in hand.  
“Just following the law, ma’am. Are you aware that you have five outstanding parking tickets? You could be arrested for such an infraction.”  
“I’ll pay them, just make them stop!”  
“Sorry. You’ll have to take this up with the city.”  
“I can’t order a taxi! I have to have my car to do my job!” she shouted, on her tiptoes as she made an attempt to get “up in his face”. It wasn’t that effective at just over five feet tall, she found.  
“You’re just going to have to figure it out. See you in court.” He turned and attempted to keep his cool walk going even as she threw her bagel and cream cheese at him. He found half of it had stuck to his coat all the way back to the office, right before he found out about Lupin’s newest venture.

 

*******  
“So there’s a caveat,” Fujiko sighed.  
“I HATE caveats!” Lupin replied as he sunk down in his seat before looked over to Jigen to remind him exactly what a “caveat” was.  
“A catch,” Jigen replied without looking up for his crossword.  
“Ah. So what’s the catch?”  
“I can’t get to our director.”  
“Aw, he wanted to cast you as the hot mom and not the lead in his newest movie, didn’t he?”  
“He wouldn’t know a mom was hot if she was on fire.”  
“Beg pardon.”  
“Von Dyer’s not into the ladies,” Fujiko replied, running her fingers through her hair as she leaned back in the chair.  
“More for me then!” Lupin grinned. “Well we’ll just have to revise our plans. Goemon! You have that cute boy band look!”  
The samurai was flung from his meditation and shot his head up and over to Lupin, “W-What!? Absolutely not!”  
“Taylor Swift is never going to love you back, you don’t have to keep saving yourself for her you know,” Lupin giggled.  
“You shut up about that!” the samurai demanded, his face going totally red at this accusation.  
“I’ll go,” Jigen sighed and tossed aside his crossword. “Paper’s boring today anyway.”  
“Really?” Lupin slid in closer to the gunman and put an arm around his shoulders. “Anything you’ve been wanting to tell us, Jigen~?”  
“Yeah. Your new cologne stinks.”  
Goemon noted how tense the gunman had become as he sat there, but it had been even before Lupin’s joking accusation. It had happened when Lupin—Oh.  
It came to Goemon in a pop of realization. He found himself red-faced again as he watched the pair on the couch, Jigen now attempting to wriggle away from Lupin and into a back bedroom.  
He’d just become aware to something he didn’t particularly want to.  
Goemon found a sleeping bag and pillow when it came time for bed. He walked in and found Jigen with his jacket and hat placed on the hat rack to the right of the desk he sat hunched over as he spread out his gun in front of him and continued to clean it. Jigen turned around, found Goemon, and turned back to his work after emitting a low growl.  
“And that’s why I don’t open my mouth. We’ve shared a bed dozens of times for these things, and suddenly you’re wanting to camp out on the floor. I don’t like you like that, Goemon. You’re too young for me and too damned pig-headed.”  
“But you love Lupin.” Jigen’s shoulders flinched at this accusation. “You’re in love with him. That’s why you haven’t told him anything.”  
“I don’t want to talk about this. Not with you. Not with anyone.”  
“Why have you not said anything to him?” Goemon set down the sleeping bag and took a seat cross-legged on top of the bed.  
“Listen, I don’t really like this new thing we’ve got going where we share feelings back and forth. I don’t want any part of your drum circle of hugs or whatever you’re trying to do, okay? It’s not like I’d even have a shot so why even talk about it?”  
“Fujiko.” Goemon watched as Jigen bristled at the very mention of her name. “It’s not that you don’t trust her… You’re jea—”  
“If you say it I swear to God I’ll beat you to death with this gun if I can’t put it back together fast enough to shoot you.”  
“It must be lonely.”  
“Well, yeah. Follow a guy around knowing nothin’s ever gonna come from it but you do it because you’re a dumbass dipshit who doesn’t know how to just stop. So you always get on the damned plane, or boat, or whatever you get picked up in, you get shot at, get your money, go home. Repeat all over again in another couple of weeks. You sit back and wonder if you’re actually starting to like the frustration of it all in a sick way.”  
“Does Lupin know about this?”  
“If he does he doesn’t let on. He plays but I feel like he wouldn’t if he knew that it was more than just playing for some of us.”  
“You should tell him.”  
“Oh, right! Let me get up and—That’s right. He’s kinda with Fujiko next door right now. Just… Leave me with this, okay? I got it handled.”  
But as Goemon pretended to meditate while Jigen continued to work, he found himself less sure of this. He finally inhaled deeply before clearing his throat, “I… Haven’t really ever….”  
He trailed off from here, and Jigen turned around to look at him with a raised eyebrow, “What?”  
“With…” this had seemed like such a good idea in his head. He’d been such a fool. “A woman…”  
Both of Jigen’s eyebrows shot up now, “So…. You like guys?”  
“No! N-No. There’s… Nothing wrong with that, either. I just… Became focused on my training. It never really occurred to me until later what I’d missed.”  
“Didn’t you almost get married? Murasaki, right?”  
“It never got beyond holding hands or things like that…” he admitted, now his focus upon the ground.  
“Why the hell would you tell me something like this? Did you want to go out and take care of that…?”  
“No! I merely figured that it would be something you could hold over my head. To assure you that I won’t tell your secret.”  
“Oh… Thanks…” Jigen’s voice fell, and he turned back around to his work, which was spent in silence for the remainder of the evening.

******  
It was four hours into his stakeout and Zenigata still hadn’t seen anything outside the movie studio. Against his better judgment, he found himself drawn to his cell phone, and just as quickly drawn to the dating website.  
He was prepared for more disappointment when he instead found himself choking on his coffee after realizing he had a message in his inbox. In his excitement he tossed the cup out the window and completely ignored the fact that it landed on a thin man in a guard’s uniform who walked with a particular bow.  
“Hey! Watch—” the man in the uniform stopped as he looked in on the preoccupied Zenigata, and quickly rushed away with the two other guards at his side, one sporting a beard and the other long hair tied into a ponytail.  
“Dinner, huh? Yeah. Yeah, I can do that! I can definitely do that!” Zenigata exclaimed as he typed back his message slowly. Autocorrect was such a pain in the ass. It took him a while, but he eventually constructed a message well written enough to send off.  
He had a date, he thought to himself with a grin. For the first time in years.

******  
“You almost done in there, Jigen?” Lupin knocked upon the door of the bathroom stall, and Jigen tossed the rest of the guard uniform over the stall door and let it land on Lupin. He then stepped out, adjusting the tie to his suit, and reached out to Lupin’s head as he noticed his fedora upon Lupin’s head.  
“Who the hell gave you the right—!?”  
“Relax! Just keeping it safe for you! Hey, what happened to your hand?”  
“Doesn’t matter,” Jigen put on the pair of glasses in the pocket of the suit and turned to the mirror. “So what’s my story? I’m a producer?”  
“Right! Wanting to make the next great motion picture!” Lupin replied, shoving a script against Jigen’s chest.  
“…”Temptress Teacher”. You can’t be serious with this!”  
“What? I wrote it myself! Based a little bit on a true story, too,” Lupin said with a nudge and a wink. “Now get out there and remember you want to see his private collection—But more importantly his movies!”  
“Lupin…” Goemon sighed.  
“What?”  
“…Nothing.”

*******  
Von Dyer liked hunting. That was for certain. The mounted quail behind his desk was the first indicator—The bear in the corner with the stitches visible beneath the fur also let Jigen know that he had a shitty taxidermist.  
Jigen shook his head as he flipped through the script, feeling his head start to ache as he muttered select lines out loud.  
“Boss knows nothin’ about how to write an action scene…” Jigen grumbled to himself. “Or a love scene. Or dialogue. Jeeze what a friggin’ mess.”  
“Is talking to yourself a habit or are you disturbed? Because I never know any more in this business.” Jigen stood for the soft and even tone of Von Dyer, who walked out from a pair of large black doors and into his private office and exchanged a handshake with the man. “So you’re Mr. …. Mine?”  
“That son of a bitch,” Jigen hissed under his breath as Von Dyer sat down in front of the mounted quail at his desk.  
“Pardon?”  
“I. Uh. Got a stitch. For this,” Jigen explained, raising his bandaged hand.  
“…Right. Might I see this script that was rushed over to me with such importance that I had to black out all of my afternoon meetings?”  
Jigen passed him the script after a moment’s hesitation—Even if this was a front he was ashamed to be associated with something so poorly written.  
Von Dyer adjusted his gold framed glasses and sat back in his large, leather red chair, extending one arm out to his left. “Please, help yourself to the bar.”  
“Right. Thanks,” Jigen nodded gratefully, and immediately rushed to pour himself a glass of what turned out to be an excellent year of brandy. With a whistle he admired the label on it before pouring himself a glass.  
“You really have a knack for writing out some… Very specific actions. This must make you a hit with the ladies.”  
“Please. Gave up on them years ago,” Jigen snorted, and flinched as he heard a chuckle from Lupin in the earpiece had hidden with his shaggy hair. He felt Von Dyer’s eyes upon him then, and turned to meet the man’s gaze, sipping the brandy as calmly as possible while never breaking eye contact.  
“A man with my own tastes then.”  
“I could say the same with you and this brandy! This stuff’s amazing! What year is this, 1923?”  
“Actually it’s 1823.” Von Dyer replied before returning to the script. “Truth be told, this is a bit graphic. Even for me. So it intrigues me. Maybe we could discuss it a little more this evening if you’re not that busy. I’m not sure how long you’ll be in town.”  
“If you’re interested in putting that out, I’ll be here as long as you need,” Jigen replied as he finished off his brandy. Lines like that came easier when he was less sober. He again became unnerved at the look Von Dyer gave him from above the pages of the script, and shifted from one foot to another to do something with the silence between them.  
“I think I’d be interested,” Von Dyer answered.

******  
“Who would have thought our little Jigen was such a flirt?!” Lupin giggled as he sat hunched over the radio listening to the exchange between the two. “I should have had him do this years ago! It’ll be a good backup when Fujiko’s busy!”  
“Lupin, you might want to… Nevermind…” Goemon huffed from his place cross-legged inside the van. “What are we going to be doing?”  
“Well, Jigen’s going to keep talking to Von what’s-his-face and we’re going to listen in for where that script is. From there we swipe in while Jigen keeps him busy and before you know it that think’s on its way to the highest seller and I’m owing Jigen a bottle of 1823 brandy!”  
Goemon gave a roll of the eyes and shook his head. Jigen’s headache was spreading out to him, it seemed.

******  
It’d been hell trying to remember what people wore to these things. The last time he had been preparing for one, cell phones were mainly regulated to cars and “Miami Vice” was the hit show. In an act of defeat he finally settled on his regular outfit, minus the trench coat and hat. These were kept in the car, however, just in case.  
Lupin had been quiet since his declaration of wanting to steal a reel of film a few days ago. Zenigata was happy to find his time waiting for her to show up provided him ample time to figure out Lupin’s next move.  
He’d worked his way from “A” to “F” in the possible scenarios running through his head when he started to get a bit anxious and start checking the time on his watch every two or three minutes.  
He was on “J” when he started to work his way through the breadsticks, and “Q” when he noticed the restaurant starting to clear out.  
By “U” the restaurant was closing, and he found his meal had been comped by a sympathetic manager who had kept a close eye on him, much like all of the wait staff and even some of the cooks in the back. It was when he was on “Y” that the restaurant was closing and he found himself walking back to his car with his hands in his pockets, daring not to look upward.  
If he had, he probably would have noticed the woman rushing the opposite direction of him, and this would have stopped him from colliding right with her. He managed to grab onto her hands just before she fell to the ground, but just as quickly let go in surprise when he realized exactly who it was.  
“Y-You!”  
“Yeah. Me. Ow…” Shadi hissed as she attempted to stand, and Zenigata found himself scrambling to help her stand up on the sidewalk. This included helping her slip into one of her high heels that had gone flying and helping her as she leaned on him to put the cream colored shoe back on.  
“What… What are you even doing here?!”  
“Trying to catch a cab because you booted my car, remember?!” she snapped, her dark brown eyes flashing at him.  
Zenigata found himself absolutely flustered by this response, and finally cleared his throat. “Do… Would you like a lift home?”  
“Seeing as how my feet are killing me from falling in those heels, sure!” she flinched as she took another step, and Zenigata continued to help balance her all the way back to his car. “Is this a patrol car?”  
“Mine’s in the shop so I borrowed this one. Plus I need it for an assignment I’m working on now.” Zenigata leaned down and opened the passenger door for Shadi, and she gave a groan of relief as she leaned against the seat of the cruiser.  
“You didn’t have to do this…”  
“It’s an officer’s duty to serve the public… Even when he’s served,” Zenigata answered, snapping a bit at this last part.  
“It’s never anything personal.”  
“So that’s why I was in the middle of my office when you did it?”  
“She made you sound like a complete deadbeat, in my defense.”  
“She would,” Zenigata clenched his teeth, and turned left as he was instructed.  
“Were you meeting someone for something?”  
“Dinner. She got busy,” he replied, now taking a right and merging with the rows of other cars. “What’s an American doing serving court papers in France?”  
“I’m a dual citizen. I couldn’t really find work in America, so I moved here, had a little more luck, but not much… You got stood up, didn’t you?”  
Zenigata jerked the police car over into the middle lane as he muttered to himself.  
“Let me take you do dinner then?”  
Zenigata blinked, and removed one of his hands from the wheel of the cruiser, “Wait… Me?”  
“As a thank you and an apology. I only think some chain restaurants are open right now, but if you’re okay with some iffy burgers… I’ll pay.”  
“That’d be nice,” the inspector couldn’t help by admit. He hadn’t even realized the small smile that’d grown on his face as he changed directions now to the nearest fast food restaurant he could remember in the neighborhood.

 

******  
“You didn’t get it?” Lupin couldn’t help but show his deflation as he slumped over on the couch. The setting had changed from the house in the countryside to a rental apartment in Paris, closer to their target. This had only been after Lupin kept complaining about a draft coming in to the place, as if there was a loose board in the house somewhere.  
“I’ll have better luck today,” Jigen promised as he adjusted his fedora in the mirror in front of the desk and turned around. “He wants to meet and discuss your porno over some drinks.”  
“Hey! That is classy erotica! There’s a difference!”  
“What? The theaters of the floor don’t stick?”  
“Well, not as much,” Lupin giggled. “You just keep being your adorable self and we’ll keep looking for where he might have it stored. No luck finding the vault in his home yet, right Fujiko?”  
The brunette only huffed, crossed her legs, and looked away from Lupin. The thief, in turn, scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You’re not still mad at me, are you?”  
“You have me working as a maid in there! I didn’t get where I am by changing bedsheets.”  
“Well don’t you worry; I’ll make sure the next target has a thing for feisty brunettes!” Lupin gave a grin as he leaned in to her closer, and Fujiko smirked as she playfully pushed him away.  
“…I’ll see you both later…” Jigen muttered, and headed for the apartment door. Lupin was too busy with Fujiko to notice the gunman look down at his fedora contemplatively before setting it down on the desk and leaving the apartment for the cab downstairs.

******  
Von Dyer hadn’t mentioned the drinks being on a boat. But there he was, waving to Jigen from the deck of the docked yacht with a cocktail in his hand. Gone was the black turtleneck Jigen had originally seen him in, replaced by a peach-colored dress shirt and pair of shorts.  
“I was hoping you’d make it soon!” Von Dyer exclaimed as he rose from his spot. “Come on aboard, Mr. Mine!”  
Jigen flinched; he would never get used to that name. He looked about the dock for any possible attackers as he approached the yacht, and continued this by scanning the premises while standing on the deck with his hands in his pockets.  
“You don’t have your glasses today!”  
Shit.  
“Forgot ‘um. Vision’s not that bad,” Jigen replied as he sat across from the director.  
“Good. It’s nice to be able to see your eyes. May I pour you something to drink?”  
It would certainly make things easier, Jigen thought before holding out his glass. Von Dyer signaled for the boat to take off with a wave of his hand, and Jigen watched as the dock became more and more a distant memory and the English Channel slowly overtaking the scenery.  
“So tell me, what’s your favorite movie?”  
“Bullitt,” Jigen replied quickly, finishing off the Bloody Mary and wishing it was whiskey. He didn’t care if it was only eleven in the morning… Already he was feeling like something that would knock him on his ass.  
“Mine has to be this little film I acquired some time ago. Its previous owner met with a very tragic end. Unfortunate, really. The poor bastard was found with a bullet in his head. He’d just left it to me, too.”  
“You must’ve been beside yourself.”  
“I thought you’d appreciate hearing about it—Seeing as how it’s what you’re after.”  
Jigen stopped pouring himself his drink and looked back out at the dock to see the chances of being able to swim back. With his lungs… It wasn’t good.  
“You’re not the first one to try,” Von Dyer leaned forward and grinned. “I’m sorry to lead you on, but I know all about who you are and who you work for.”  
With Bloody Mary in one hand, Jigen drew his gun with this other, pointing it directly at Von Dyer’s forehead.  
Von Dyer smirked and then broke out into a laugh. “You… You really are a distrustful one! And you’re the one who’s been lying to me. I want to make a deal with you, Mr. Jigen.”  
“Talk fast. Trigger finger’s not as stable on open water.”  
“I’ll give you the film. But I have a request.”  
“I ain’t some shit house band. I don’t do requests.”  
“Give me a day.”  
“To?”  
Von Dyer stood up from his spot while Jigen’s gun remained focused on him, and he slowly approached Jigen with his hands raised to show he meant no harm. He approached Jigen, and the gunman focused his gun on Von Dyer’s chest now, pressing the muzzle into it to let him know he meant business. Von Dyer only smiled, and brought his face closer to Jigen’s to the point where their noses nearly touched.  
“I’ll give you the first reel of the film now if you spend the rest of the day with me. The rest if you can make it until Friday.”

******  
“This… This is amazing!” Lupin sat on the edge of his seat in the apartment as the rest of the gang watched the bedsheet-turned-projection screen play scenes from the black and white movie. “Jigen… How did you even get this on your own?!”  
“Magician never reveals his secrets,” Jigen replied from his spot behind them at the desk. He only occasionally looked over his shoulder at the film, only to return to cleaning his gun. His fedora was back down, drawn over his eyes, and his shoulders moved up and down at the desk as he busied himself with his obsessive work. “Guy says he’s good for the rest on Friday.”  
“I’ve heard that before,” Fujiko glanced over to Goemon, who scowled in return. The samurai stood from his spot on the floor and walked over to Jigen, tapping him on the shoulder gently enough to not break the gunman’s cleaning process.  
“I need to speak with you. Now.”  
Jigen looked upward from his work, and extinguished the little bit left on his cigarette before following Goemon into the back bedroom.  
“You did something,” the samurai was quick to accuse after Jigen had shut the door. “Von Dyer wouldn’t just give you the film without something in return. He’s a known manipulator.”  
“I’ve got this covered, all right? We just went out on his boat and talked for a little bit.”  
“That’s all?”  
“That’s all you need to know about.”  
“…Disgraceful…”  
“What was that?”  
“I said it was disgraceful!” Goemon shouted, making sure that it was loud and clear enough for Jigen to get the point across.  
“You have NO Goddamn right to judge what I do to get what I need. We’re all thieves, we ain’t no better than one another here!”  
Their voices, competing in loudness, drowned out the sounds of Fujiko and Lupin creeping over and opening the door a crack to hear better.  
“You would judge others for doing the same thing!”  
“You’re getting’ pretty judgey there yourself! Butt out of my life and get yourself laid for once, you uptight virgin son of a bitch!”  
The door creaked open, and Fujiko and Lupin both froze in their positions crouched down, their eyes wide at having gotten caught.  
“We saw a mouse?” Lupin said with a clearing of his throat. He started to rise, only to be shoved to the side as Jigen stormed out of the room and past them.  
“I’ll be back at the end of the week. I’m going to be off doing my Goddamn job in the meantime,” Jigen snarled, and with a slam of the door he was gone from the apartment.  
Goemon, meantime, averted his eyes from the duo as they turned to him, and he chose the bedroom window to escape to.  
“What do you think all that was about?” Fujiko wondered aloud in the now silent apartment.  
“No clue. Looks like I was right all along about the Goemon “virgin” thing though.”  
“Eh?” it had been years since he’d nearly tripped over a pair of high heels, but Zenigata found himself doing so in the bedroom of his small apartment as he went about his daily routine of brushing his teeth and reviewing his case file. He glanced up from the file and saw a bundle of sheets moving on his bed, and immediate flushed and turned back to his file while turning to walk out of the room.  
This resulted in his falling over the high heels that had nearly gotten him the first time; they had come back with a vengeance.  
“What the hell?! Whose idea were these things anyway?!” he growled as he looked out at his papers spread out on the floor in front of him.  
“What time is it?” he heard in a low moan, and this was followed by a gasp after Shadi reached for the digital clock on his nightstand. “Oh my God! I’m so dead! Woah! Are you okay?”  
“Yeah. I always brush my teeth like this. Helps me think better,” Zenigata replied as he waved his toothbrush in the air.  
She hopped up from the bed and began to pick up the papers, furrowing her brow as she picked up one. “A red Alfa Romeo? Hey, I think I saw one of those this week.”  
“W-What?” Zenigata straightened to attention, bolting up and hovering behind her as she studied the photo.  
“I’m a little bit of a car nut… When mine isn’t being impounded…. Yeah, it was near a bunch of rental apartments—It might not be the same one, but how many of those do you see anymore on the road, right?”  
Zenigata thought for a moment, and then narrowed his eyes and took Shadi by the arm, “Come on!”  
“W-What?! I have work to get to!”  
“You have justice to get to!” Zenigata replied excitedly. She barely had time to grab her shoes as he led her out of the apartment and down to his cruiser, and she gasped as she saw herself in the rearview mirror. Zenigata, meanwhile, was too focused on started his car and peeling out of the lot to notice his neighbors’ intrigued looks at the female visitor.

 

******  
“Perfect shot!” Von Dyer exclaimed as he watched the bullet Jigen fired land directly in the middle of the target. “Taking out our aggression on someone, or just showing off? Or both?”  
Jigen said nothing, but kept firing away, until he found his gun out of bullets and the target thoroughly pulverized. He put it but in its holster and celebrated his handiwork with drinking one of the beers in a nearby cooler.  
“My turn,” Von Dyer stood from where he had perched himself on a fence, and removed his own weapon from a black case. “I had an actress who couldn’t remember her lines. I brought this onto the set one day and she magically could remember them all.”  
“What’s that? MAS 1873?”  
“Precisely. Good eye,” Von Dyer extended his right arm and fired at the targets.  
“Your arm’s wrong.”  
“Hrm?”  
“Here…” Jigen stood behind Von Dyer and bent the man’s elbow a bit, letting his other hand rest on Von Dyer’s hip. “See? You won’t be as likely to break something that way.”  
“You’re very take charge… Quite the opposite from the other night. Not that I minded,” Von Dyer looked back and smirked, and Jigen just as quickly averted his eyes from the director. “How did your employer end up liking the movie, anyhow?”  
“Over the moon. Why the hell give it to me, is what I don’t understand.”  
Von Dyer turned about to face the gunman, and his normal resting frown turned into a small smile. “I suppose infatuation makes us do things we normally wouldn’t. Would you agree, Mr. Jigen? That’s precisely where I find myself now.”  
“Heh….”  
“You know I’m quite unpopular. I could always use a new bodyguard…”  
“Sorry Von Dyer,” Jigen took a step back, and removed his hand from the man’s hip. “I already got a boss.”  
“Oh I think I could work out a payment plan to make it worth your while.”  
Jigen realized that Von Dyer had stepped closer to him once more, but made no break to move away. This was until he heard a rustling in the trees, and watched a familiar face from jump down from them.  
“Son of a BITCH… Do you get off on watching me or something?!” Jigen rushed past Von Dyer and directly to Goemon.  
“A friend of yours, Jigen?” Von Dyer asked with a raised eyebrow.  
“Pain in my ass is what he is!” Jigen snarled. “What are you doing out here, Goemon?”  
“Lupin was worried about where you had gone off to. We all were.” Goemon looked past Jigen to Von Dyer, and made no attempt to break away from the icy stare he was given.  
“I’m a grown man. No need to worry about me.”  
“You sound a bit jealous,” Von Dyer chuckled to Goemon. The samurai jerked his head back and flushed in response.  
“Lay off him,” Jigen returned, waving away Von Dyer. “Just tell Boss I got this, okay? I’ve worked alone before and I can now. I don’t need him or that bitch out here. And I don’t need you out here either, so quit following me around like a lost puppy.”  
“I would like to have you off my property before I have to get authorities involved,” Von Dyer’s voice was calm and even as he pushed up his glasses, their glint almost signifying a warning to Goemon. “Your friend is in good hands. I assure you for this.”  
Goemon’s eyes narrowed, and his turned around to leave the pair. This wasn’t without a quick flashing of the sword, and as he disappeared into the wooded area, a row of trees slid slightly, only to fall down with a crash.  
“I’m sorry about that…” Jigen said a short time later on his way back to Von Dyer’s estate, gun in tow. “He doesn’t trust you.”  
“Do you?”  
“Not a damn bit,” Jigen answered as he was led through the back door and into the spacious kitchen .No taxidermied animals there. It was practically a miracle.  
“I’d love to earn it,” Von Dyer’s voice had dropped, and he approached Jigen after setting down the box with his gun in it at the breakfast nook in the corner. He placed a hand against a post of the door, effectively cornering Jigen, and the gunman gave a small huff as Von Dyer raised the fedora to kiss him gently.

 

******  
“Moving is always such a pain!” Lupin made another turn down the French country road and flicked at the cigarette in his left hand. “How Zenigata even spotted us is beyond me.”  
“Well you are the only one wearing a bright red suit jacket in this heat. Aside from the bellhops,” Fujiko replied, adjusting her black sunglasses and then the purple scarf around her head. “Subtlety isn’t really your forte, Lupin.”  
“Hey, are Jigen and Goemon acting kinda weird to you? Weirder than their normal weird.”  
“What, you mean that shouting match?”  
“Yeah, not to mention… I don’t know, but I get this feeling like Goemon’s been trying to tell me something. What I don’t know. And I don’t don’t know things a lot, so this has got me intrigued.”  
“Intrigued or nervous?”  
“Can I be a little of both?”  
“Boys will be boys. Maybe Jigen offered to help Goemon with his problem.”  
“Jigen!?” Lupin spat out with laughter. “Why would Jigen offer to help out Goemon with something like that?!”  
“You really don’t read people well, do you?”  
“Fujiko, I’ve known Jigen for years! Trust me, if it was something like that, I would’ve figured it out by now.”  
Oh, the precious idiot, thought Fujiko with a sigh.

******  
“…He got away in a hot air balloon….” Shadi still couldn’t believe it as she said it aloud to herself. Again she sat across from Zenigata. Again it was at a fast food restaurant. And again, as he had with much of his life, Zenigata found himself stewing over the fact that Lupin had escaped his clutches.  
“That’s him on a normal day,” the inspector murmured as he idly moved the French fries on his tray. “Sorry if I led you on a wild goose chase. I tend to work alone so things like that don’t happen.”  
“It’s… It’s okay,” she straightened up her posture and cleared her throat. “So… Did you hear anything back from the woman who stood you up?”  
“S-She didn’t… No… Not a thing…” he didn’t have the energy to make it sound better than it actually was. “I knew it was a dumb idea anyhow. I’m too damned old to be messing with those sorts of things.”  
“You’re not that old! I do it and I have an adult son!”  
Zenigata could almost hear his brain snap at this comment, and he allowed himself a few dull blinks of surprise before he mustered up a dumbfounded. “What?”  
“I had him when I was younger. He lives in a different part of France. His father was French, so he decided to move here. He’s…. Part of the reason I decided to come here, too. He helped me get the job I have now, although I’m not exactly proud of that.”  
“I’ve got a daughter. In Japan. We don’t… Really talk that much…”Zenigata found himself feeling like his chair had become a lot more uncomfortable suddenly, almost as if it were too small, or the back piece was just a little bit too forward leaning. “Part of the reason’s her mom. But I had my faults too. Probably should have been around more.”  
“And I should have studied more in school so I didn’t have to come to another country to get a low-paying job. But we make our own beds, right?”  
“Um…. Speaking of which, you’re more than welcome to stay the night again if you like.”  
“So you’re into hot moms.”  
“W-What?! I… What I meant was--”  
“It’s okay, I know. Thank you; that would be nice. It’s a little bit of a drive here from where I live, so I’d appreciate it.”  
“Maybe then… We can see about getting the boot off your car….” He added this vaguely, scratching his head as he stood up from the table and sea of wrappers from another mediocre meal.  
“R-Really?! Thank you!” the traditional, hard-nosed Japanese detective was unsure how to handle the hug that followed, but he answered it with a stilted pat on Shadi’s back.  
She was all smiles all the way back to his apartment. Zenigata actually caught sight of one of the older women who lived two floors down from him as she brought up her groceries, and she gave a small chuckle at the sight. Zenigata, in response, gave his best, polite smile, but felt as though it only came off as awkward.  
He found a shirt for Shadi to wear that evening, after looking through his painfully organized closet. While the rest of the apartment looked like chaos, the spot that housed his suits was near-perfection.  
He led her to the shower and busied himself with looking at his case file on Lupin in the meantime. There had been little from the thief about the movie he supposedly had intended to steal, either before or after Zenigata found him at his hideout. Von Dyer, the suspected target, had been of little help in the situation. When Zenigata had spoken to him, he had come off as cold and uncaring.  
Why was he mincing words? The director had come off as a complete dick.  
“Thanks for letting me use that!” he heard in the sing-song voice of the American, and turned his head around, quickly making this a double take, as she wandered out of the bathroom while still drying her hair.  
“N-No problem…” his voice was quiet and his eyes were down on the file at hand as she took a seat next to him. The old shirt he’d acquired from one of the most boring seminars in his life took on a new excitement with her in it. It was shorter than he’d expected, revealing much more of her thigh than the black pencil skirt had on when they’d been rushing around looking for where she’d seen the Alfa Romeo. Her dark brown, nearly coal-colored hair fell past her shoulders and dampened the navy blue shirt with the Interpol logo on it, and her equally dark brown eyes scanned the file as she leaned over to him to look at it for herself.  
“So this is what he’s stealing?” she looked older without her makeup. Instead of her early thirties, maybe early forties. This made him feel a lot less guilty about what else was running through his mind at that moment.  
“Huh? Yeah. A movie,” he found himself barely able to get the words out, much less in French. He nearly slipped into Japanese, and her attention shifted from the file to him. She’d caught this.  
“I do that with English sometimes,” she set aside the towel and he did his best to remain a gentleman and stay focused on the piece of paper he was looking at, even if it meant rereading the same line several times in a row. “Also… Maybe just this once we can pretend that I didn’t find you and give you those papers.”  
“No can do. Have to follow the law. Plus if it means getting her demands for alimony squashed for once and all maybe something good will come out of it.”  
“Well, something good has come out of it for me. Maybe not my diet, but it’s been interesting. I think I can see why you do it.”  
“I just have a job I have to get done. It’s not about excitement; it’s about doing what’s right.” He could only read over this same line so many times…  
“You’re a little bit of a boy scout. Don’t worry, some women like that.” She gave him a playful nudge and smiled, and he twitched a smile as best as he could. She brought her legs up to the couch, wrapping them underneath herself, and he found himself moving the file down to his lap. He was quickly getting a reminder that he was old, not dead. “This thing’s uncomfortable, how the hell did you manage to sleep on it?”  
“I barely did.”  
“I can take it tonight then, there’s no sense in you hurting your back on this rickety old thing.”  
“Hey! Some things are old but still plenty worthwhile!” he couldn’t help but snap this back; the sensitive nerve had been hit. “And no way… After all that trouble with your feet, you’re probably made out of glass and this thing would kill you.”  
“Okay, okay!” she laughed and held up her hands. “Well, we can share the bed. That’s not a big deal, we’re both adults.”  
Jesus Christ. He bolted up from the couch, even though he wasn’t sure where he was going to walk to in the small apartment. It was getting to be too much. He settled on the doorway of the bedroom, his back turned to her.  
Shadi’s voice was deflated when she finally spoke up from the couch, “Sorry… That was a little forward, wasn’t it? I…I can call a cab if you like, and go.”  
“It’s… It’s fine.” He wasn’t a stupid teenager. But he certainly felt like one at that moment. Half of him was egging himself on to return the forwardness; it’d been years, and he’d been dwelling over his loneliness not but not a few days ago. But then there was the traditionalist part of him that said that things like flowers, dates at the park, and meeting relatives were all steps before being this direct.  
Shadi rose up from the couch and walked over to him, tilting her head as if she was trying to read the expression that he was desperately trying not to have. “Nothing has to happen. I know we don’t know one another well like that. I don’t even really know your first name.”  
“Koichi.”  
“Koichi.”  
“Totally wrong.” She’d said it liked “coach-y”. “Ko. Ee. Chi.”  
“Ko-i-chi,” she repeated this to herself and nodded. “I like the sound of it.”  
He liked the way she said it when she said it properly.  
“You said nothing had to happen, so…?”  
“You’re going on a date when I saw you so I figured you were a little bit lonely, too. I’m kind of in a place right now where this is the first time in a long time I don’t feel a little bit like a loser, so I’m willing to take a risk or two.”  
He leaned down to kiss her, and meant for it to be brief. It wasn’t, she made sure of it. He found himself dropping the file, and the cautiously walking backwards into the bedroom as she followed after him. He cursed a bit as he nearly tripped over the high heels yet again, and she gave a giggle as she guided him the rest of the way to the bed by putting her hands on his hips.  
He opened his dresser drawer and came to a stark realization while she moved to the other side of the bed. He hadn’t really prepped for visitors, much less this kind, “I’ve… Got a really awkward question to ask you…”  
“I’m on the pill,” she answered.  
Hallelujah.  
This relief was only coupled with joy as he felt something soft hit his back, and he pulled it over his shoulder to realize it was the navy blue shirt she had been wearing.  
Tonight was going to be a good one.

******  
“How did you get this one?” Von Dyer moved to a nick on his upper arm, and Jigen glanced down and thought for a moment. There were more bullet and stab wounds than he remembered.  
“I think it was in Monaco, during a bank heist.” He took another long drag of his cigarette and passed it over to Von Dyer, who took a turn puffing away at it. For Von Dyer being the pain in the ass that he was, the moments like this had been rather nice. He could spot his fedora on the vanity across the room, and one of his shoes not too far away… Parts of his suit were crumpled around the room, while his gun rested on the nightstand of the side of the bed he’d ended up sleeping on.  
There were no city noises outside. No horns blaring, people yelling, or cheap hotel rooms. Only the birds chirping and a bit of fresh country air coming in from a slightly ajar balcony. The slightly opened door made him nervous, but he was kept too busy to keep a constant eye upon it.  
Von Dyer smirked knowingly and extinguished the cigarette in the ashtray on his nightstand. He broke out of the embrace and moved so he was over Jigen now, and leaned in to kiss him briefly, “Your mind’s a million miles away from here.”  
“It’s got a right to be.” Jigen turned his head to the side, and Von Dyer answered this by kissing him on his cheek.  
“You’re thinking about someone else… Your samurai friend perhaps? Or that woman you seem so focused on?”  
“Not really any of your business.”  
“I’ve got it. Your employer. Why else would someone put up with me?”  
Just to get away from shit for a little while, Jigen thought as he faced Von Dyer again and reached up to return the nicotine-tasting kiss.  
“You can open up to me, you know. I’m very fond of you.” And Jigen could tell this by the way Von Dyer’s right hand traveled down to his stomach while under the sheets of the bed. “I think I might even be falling in love with you.”  
“Bullshit,” was Jigen’s only answer with a huff. In reality the phrase sent a lightning bolt of anxiety through him. Love meant settling down. It meant no more traveling around as he had. It meant giving up on…  
“I’m serious. I have to deal with idiots all day and every day. Idiots who love nothing more than prattling on about nothing. But you’re truly interesting. I really do appreciate that in a man.”  
That wasn’t the only thing he seemed to appreciate in a man, Jigen realized as the hand moved down and he found himself suddenly out of the groggy haze he’d been in moments ago and now fully awake and aware.  
“Please let me get to know you better. Stop being so coy,” the begging was whispered as Jigen repositioned himself on the bed under Von Dyer and wrapped his arms behind the man’s neck. The anticipation of what was to come next was broken when Von Dyer reached over to answer a buzzing cell phone.  
“Yes? What is it?” The phone call apparently didn’t stop Von Dyer’s hand, and Jigen did his best to stifle moaning in the background of the call. “I’m in the middle of a very important audition…. I… I have to take this in the other room.”  
He exchanged a quick kiss with the gunman before rising from the bed, and Jigen took this opportunity to reach down into his pants on the floor and retrieve his cell phone. Phone calls, text messages, and a completely full inbox.  
Screw it. Not right now, he thought as he set it face-down on the nightstand.

******  
“Goemon, seriously, if you know anything now’s the time to spill the beans.” Lupin had gone from friendly, to playful, to outright annoyed as he paced back and forth while on his cell phone, only to have it go to Jigen’s full mailbox again. The samurai sat near the window of the hotel room, pretending to practice his meditation. “Jigen, I know this isn’t going to your box because I filled that up an HOUR ago, but we’ve been HAD so I would REALLY like to know if you’re dead or not!”  
“I can only tell you he wants his time alone, Lupin.”  
“You told me that and I’m about ready to shove that antique sword up somewhere that’s very important to you if you don’t give me a straight answer already.”  
“This fake is incredible… You’d barely know it was one!” Fujiko exclaimed as she again looked over the film reel with a jeweler’s loop. “You’d barely know if it wasn’t for the mark at the end of the real… That Von Dyer’s a bastard, but he got us pretty good… Oh well. This still might be something we can put on the market.”  
Lupin had realized it only when the reel had jammed the night before. What followed was a stream of frustrated cursing at being had, and then fear as to what had happened to the one who had claimed he could handle the issue all by himself.  
“I’ll be mad about that later, right now I—” Lupin stopped as his phone began to ring for a change. “Jigen? That you? Where the hell—”  
“Mr. Lupin!” the thick Dutch accent greeted Lupin, and the chuckle that followed, made his blood run cold. “Undoubtedly you’re looking for your friend. Your samurai companion knows where my home is. If you ever intend on seeing your precious bodyguard again I highly suggest hurrying down here.”  
Click.  
Lupin glanced down at his cell phone, and immediately rushed over to Goemon, “That guy’s got Jigen. We need to get to wherever you found them at, Goemon. And we need to get there quick!”  
Goemon’s eyes flashed, and he rose from his spot.  
“I’m coming too,” Fujiko sighed, standing up and tossing aside her jeweler’s loop. “Jigen’s not my favorite person in the world, but I want Von Dyer to get a swift kick with one of my new high heels.”

******  
It had been a wonderful night indeed. Enough that Zenigata woke up and for the first time in a long time didn’t feel his back or head ache or dread what the day had in store for him.  
“You had a lot to get off your chest,” Shadi said with a yawn as she finally came to and rolled over to face him and then curl up against him. “I’m going to be in so much trouble with work. My son is going to kill me.”  
“You were in protective police company. I’ll make sure you aren’t.”  
“I… I meant to tell you this about him… But… He’s married.”  
“Kinda young, isn’t he?”  
“Well… I had him at seventeen, so he’s twenty-two now…. And… They’re expecting a baby,” she gave Zenigata a hazarded glance before bit onto her lower lip. “I’m someone’s hot grandma.”  
“Well, you’re not Tim’s,” Zenigata muttered to himself with a roll of the eyes.  
“What?”  
“That’s fine. I’m old enough to be a grandfather, anyway. But last I heard, Toshiko’s more into work than worrying about that.”  
“Speaking about worrying, I probably should be going back to my place. At least for a little bit. But I would like to do this again.”  
“I can give you a lift back before I get back to work…” Doing things before work. Who would have thought he’d do such a thing? Not him, but he was happy enough with being able to say it. He went to picking out a new suit in his closet while she collected her things. “Where do you live at, anyhow?”  
“It’s about forty minutes from here,” she replied as she tucked in her white shirt and zipped up the back of her skirt.  
A thought occurred to Zenigata and he tucked in his own shirt, and he turned around to her, choosing to be cautious as he approached it, “…What were you doing in my neighborhood if you live that far away? And that late at night?”  
She shut her eyes and sighed, “…God dammit…”  
“What?”  
“I… This is going to sound really bad, but… I didn’t know you at the time, so…”  
“You’re working for Lupin?”  
“No! No. I promise. I… That date you were supposed to be on, I… I found the profile and I…. I was really mad about the boot. Really mad. And I wanted to get back and you and… Then I saw how upset you were and I couldn’t go through with it.”  
“You. You were the one who stood me up. And you were going to call me out in the middle of the restaurant. Crap. I knew this was too good to be true…”  
“I’m really sorry, Koichi, I—”  
“Inspector. Zenigata. It’s Inspector Zenigata to you,” he snapped in return. She shuddered at this and nodded. She didn’t bother to tie her hair back. He has his back to her as she walked out of the bedroom, and he heard his apartment door close quietly.  
And like that his life was completely back to normal.  
A ringing came from his phone. He was prepped to throw it straight through the window if it was her. Instead it was his boss, who almost seemed stunned at having to inform him about Lupin’s whereabouts. Usually he was the one to give them an update.  
He rushed out without bothering to grab his suit jacket, much less his hat and trench coat. He hoped for Lupin’s sake he had on his good running dress shoes, because he was finding himself in rare form that morning.

 

*******  
Getting to Von Dyer’s home had been easy enough. It was an affluent area of the French countryside Lupin had known from his childhood. This meant driving at a breakneck speed that left Fujiko clutching onto the dashboard and Goemon bouncing around in the back seat.  
“Zenigata… Good, we actually probably need the old man today,” Lupin muttered as he adjusted his rearview and saw the cruiser following their bumper closely.  
“You must have done something to really anger him, Lupin… He looks more pissed than usual.”  
“He’s just grumpy we haven’t seen one another in a while,” Lupin shifted the gears of his Alfa Romeo and peeled up the gravel driveway the led to Von Dyer’s house.  
“LUPIN!” Zenigata was already prepared with handcuffs drawn as he bolted from his cruiser, was taken aback as Lupin instead reached out and hugged him like a long-lost friend.  
“Zenigata! Am I glad to see you!” Zenigata could barely believe the words he heard come from the thief’s mouth. “You look like hell! Not get any sleep last night?”  
Zenigata’s face flushed, and was caught off guard by this familiarity. He had been prepared to hog tie Lupin into submission, but found himself only stuttering and his hands, which were up and prepared for a fight, drooping to his sides. “…And perfume? You old dog you; you had some fun last night!”  
“I DON’T want to talk about it!”  
“Good! We don’t have time anyway. It’s a long story but Jigen’s in trouble. I promise I’ll let you keep me in a jail cell an entire night if you give us a hand.”  
“W-What…?” Had he heard this correctly? He was on too little sleep to take it all in.  
“We think it’s a hostage situation,” Goemon continued.  
“Jigen tried to work solo,” Fujiko added with a sigh.  
“That never works for any of you idiots. All right. I’ll flank the rear,” Zenigata replied as he pulled out his gun.  
“Didn’t you get your fill of that last night?” Lupin winked, and Zenigata gave a growl.  
“Come on boys, let’s play nice,” Fujiko made sure her own weapon was loaded as the four walked around to the back of the farmhouse. It wasn’t particularly large, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t trapped.  
Lupin picked the back door with a bobby pin borrowed from Fujiko, and then led the cautious trek through the kitchen.  
“Empty beer cans. Yeah, he’s here…” Lupin whispered, sniffing the air and finding the otherwise fresh country air coupled with stale cigarette smoke.  
The four walked slowly down the hall, Lupin stopping dead as he began to heard something in the faint distance. It sounded like… Screaming?  
“Jigen!” Lupin shouted, breaking off into a run.  
“So I guess our being cautious is out the window!” Fujiko snapped as she followed after him, Goemon and Zenigata bringing up the rear.  
“It’s from here,” Lupin stopped in front of one of the bedroom doors and stepped aside, nodding for Goemon to take over for a moment.  
Fujiko was the one to realize the nature of the screams, and gave a gasp, “W-Wait--!”  
But it was too late. With three strokes of his hand the door was sliced into several pieces, all that fell to the ground to make it very clear to the four in the hallway that it was not, in fact, a hostage situation.  
Jigen was quick to give a yelp and wrap himself up in the bedsheet as he sat up from his position under Von Dyer. The director, meanwhile, stopped his own yelling and calmly reached over to grab his bathrobe off the floor. He then walked over to the nightstand and grabbed his glasses, looking back at Jigen and grinning.  
He then looked to Lupin as he brushed back his blond hair, “I assume you found out the film was a fake. So now you know that if you attempt to screw with me, I will screw with one of yours. I suppose it because more literal than I intended, but I’ve had that complaint with my movies too. We’ve had a good time, your friend and I.”  
Jigen said nothing from his spot on the bed, only adjusting the sheets when he realized they had slipped off one of his otherwise bare shoulders, revealing the start of a bite mark.  
Goemon instinctively stepped out of the way as Von Dyer made his way out into the hall, and Von Dyer stopped in the hallway to look Lupin up one and down.  
“So you’re the one whose name he shouted out earlier. Interesting. Officer, I would very much like to have these three arrested for trespassing. The other one’s a whore, but has committed no crime here otherwise.”  
Jigen’s eyes were covered by his black hair as he remained still in the bed, the sheets still drawn up around him. He couldn’t look up at anyone that moment. He didn’t want to, although he could feel the looks he was getting. This gave him time to have a a good look over the room—Empty bottles of wine, rumpled clothing, and the remains of silver wrappers littered the floor, as if to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind what he had been doing.  
“H-Hey, give the guy some privacy!” Zenigata of all people was the one to shout, and the other three members of the gang scattered and headed back out the hallway. This was only after Lupin made an attempt to follow Von Dyer, gun drawn, but was pulled back by Fujiko and Zenigata.  
Jigen wordlessly hurried out the back as he was still fumbling with his tie, lit cigarette in his mouth as he passed by the four who waited awkwardly underneath a tree.  
“Poor bastard…” Zenigata muttered with a shake of the head as he watched Jigen hop into the back seat of the Alfa Romeo. “You’re lucky you caught me on a REALLY bad day. I never saw any of you. Also if that guy in there ends up floating face-down in the Seine I wouldn’t blame you.”  
Jigen sunk down lower in his seat as Zenigata passed him and climbed into his cruiser. He was already on his next cigarette.  
Goemon said noting as he took a seat next to Jigen, and Jigen could swear he saw Fujiko give him, of all things, a sympathetic glance. He lowered his hat to reject her pity. This was the last thing he had wanted. And Lupin. Lupin said nothing. Even his expression was blank as he started up the car again, this time exiting out of the driveway at a much slower speed than before.  
“…He’s got to have some kind of mind control…” the thief finally surmised in order to break the heavy silence. “Or some kind of mind-altering drug. Maybe it was something in the beer.”  
“Or maybe I just sleep with men,” Jigen snapped. “That’s a novel idea, right?”  
This made the silence only thicker. Lupin dared not say another word.  
Jigen was the first one to get out of the car, walking past the other three into the new safe house and ducking his head down the hallway to find a place to go hide like the wounded animal he felt like at the moment. He found it in a small bedroom, and the other three members of the gang were left alone in the living area as they heard the door shut closed.

******  
Jigen wondered how long he could stay holed up in the room as he noticed the sun already setting. Maybe he would luck out and the earth would give out from beneath him and swallow him up. He was resting by the balcony, having long run out of cigarettes. His crosswords did nothing for him and any noise made him feel anxious, so the radio was out. So it was mainly people watching outside the window—Minus any people. He preferred it that way right at that moment.  
The first knock on the door startled him, but he quickly made the best attempt he could to ignore it. The note slid under the door did, however, garner enough interest to make him open it.  
“Put this on” it read. With a raised eyebrow he cautiously opened the door, and found Lupin there, with a look that at least said he seemed recovered, holding a bag by a hanger.  
“Come on and get dressed, we’re going out.”  
He never knew when to quit. “I don’t feel like stealin’ anything tonight, Lupin. I—”  
“Not stealing. I’m taking you out. So get dressed!” Lupin shoved the bag at him and quickly shut the door, and Jigen’s better judgment lost again as he set the bag down on the bed and unzipped it.  
A suit, but much nicer than his usual navy blue attire. This one was instead black with a red shirt, and a black tie that he recognized from the numerous disguises they had worn through the years. The rest of it looked fairly new at least.  
“What do I have to lose at this point?” He drug it along with him to the bathroom as he washed the Von Dyer off, and then found himself adjusting it in the long mirror in the corner of the room.  
“You always were crappy when it came to tying ties…” he heard from behind him, and Lupin walked over from his spot in the doorway and removed the loosened tie around his neck, slipping it over Jigen’s and taking the one the gunman had been struggling with.  
“The gray clashes, don’t you think?”  
“Jigen, I think you’re asking the wrong guy about this!” Lupin’s suit was also black, but instead of a red shirt his was a light orange that matched the silver and orange cufflinks he’d paired it with. “So I don’t have to meet your parents or anything before this, right?”  
“Huh? What’re you even talking about?”  
“That’s how a date usually works, right? Usually I’m just too impatient and skip ahead to the good stuff, so I think I’m a little rusty.”  
He should have felt overjoyed or at least stunned by this. But Jigen for himself there shaking and his fists slowly forming into balls. He missed his fedora more than ever as he felt his face grow red.  
“I’m not… Going to be patronized… By some sort of friggin’ pity date.” His voice was slow and purposeful, and Lupin greeted him with raised eyebrows and what looked to be genuine surprise. Maybe even a little bit of hurt.  
“I just want to see what you see in it is all,” Lupin shrugged. “If I pitied you we probably would’ve just had a quick screw and I’d be making a drink at the bar right now. Just relax and enjoy yourself, all right? You went through a lot more than you had to and I just want to make sure you have a good time. It’s what friends do. I know you just got burned pretty bad today, but I just need you to let down a teeny, tiny bit of those walls and enjoy yourself. Also I promise not to get too handsy with you.”  
“Tch…” Jigen walked over to the closet in the corner before rifling through the boxes, seemingly satisfied when he pulled out a black fedora. “…You promise this just isn’t something you’re doing because you feel sorry for me.”  
“I promise.”  
Jigen didn’t have the hunted feel that he had experienced when Von Dyer stared at him. He felt just as self-conscious with Lupin looking at him, but for a different reason. Something he couldn’t quite place. Maybe he was… Nervous, almost?  
Jigen adjusted the fedora on his head before he nodded for Lupin to go ahead, and the thief did so, hurrying forward to open the door.  
“You don’t gotta do that, Boss.”  
“Force of habit,” Lupin explained, holding up his hands in mock defense. He waved to Fujiko and Goemon, who had busied themselves by trying to forget the image they’d seen earlier in the day with a game show on the TV of the living room. “You kids have a good time, and don’t wait up!”  
“You’re not jealous?” Goemon asked after the door had shut, leaving him alone with Fujiko on the couch. She merely shrugged this off after landing another correct guess—“What is Namibia?”.  
“We’re not exactly exclusive,” she brushed back her hair and smiled. “I suppose it’s a little difficult for some people to understand, but Lupin and I always have one another—Even if that means having someone else in the picture a little bit, too. I may be a little cruel, but I’m not heartless like Jigen likes to make me out to be. Although him as a jealous lover makes that all seem to click into place for me now.”  
“So you knew.”  
“Of course. I know that look anywhere, even if he had his eyes covered most of the time by that tacky hat of his! I had a little bit of fun teasing him with it, but I never really thought he was this serious. I’ve known for years now. Sort of like how I knew you were… A little less experienced than you let on.”  
Goemon’s eyes widened, and he flushed, gripping on to the sheathed sword at his side tighter.  
“You know if you’d been curious you could have just asked, right? For God’s sakes I would’ve helped. Sometimes it’s better when it’s just a friend, anyhow.”  
“I… Well, I…”  
“Or we could just find you a friend. I think I know a few people. I have friends outside of you boys, after all.” Fujiko gave him a nudge and giggled.  
“I’m-I’m all right, thank you.”  
“Well if you change your mind and want a lesson, I’m going to be washing my hair.” She left him with a wink, and Goemon let out a long exhale.  
“My teachers back at the dojo would have my head for getting this distracted,” he said to himself, feeling one of his eyebrow twitch from the stress of it all.

 

*******  
“So that guy on the dating website…”  
“Old acquaintance,” Jigen finished his glass of wine and already went to pouring more into the clear cup out of instinct.  
“I take it you two did some catching up.”  
“Goemon followed us. He thought I was betraying you all… Or some bullshit. Maybe he was lonely.”  
“That sort of thing gets us all into trouble. So what do you think about this place? Pretty nice, right!? It took a little finagling, but I managed to get us reservations!” Lupin leaned forward and grinned as he often did while showing off. Indeed it was—A little higher class than Jigen was accustomed to with the tables covered in white linen, large crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, and live band playing off in a corner. The menu was mainly made up of French words he couldn’t pronounce—The food, anyway. The liquor was about all her understood or cared about.  
“Yeah… Very upscale… Why they make the food so tiny at these things I’ll never understand.”  
“Well if we have a second one of these we can go to a ball park and eat like Americans with foot-long hot dogs! So tell me about yourself—What’s a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?”  
“I’m trying to figure that out myself. You?”  
“Trying to show someone a good night for once. He’s had a rough week.”  
“Really? I know that guy. I heard he’s a complete prick.”  
“Eh. He can be. But he’s mine,” Lupin winked and took a sip from his wine, only to nearly spit it out with a chuckle. “Did I really just make you blush?! Mr. Tough Gunman?!”  
“This is stupid and I’m going home.”  
“Aw, don’t be like that!” Lupin reached out for Jigen’s arm as the gunman rose from the table, and Jigen slowly, against his better judgment, sat back down in his seat across from Lupin. “You never minded my jokes before!”  
Jigen looked away and huffed, “It’s different now…”  
“It doesn’t have to be.”  
“Like you’ll honestly ever forget someone told you I shouted out your name while I was having sex.”  
“Well, I won’t hold it over your head. Many ladies have done it before.”  
“I’m not a lady,” Jigen hissed, gripping the sides of his chair.  
“I didn’t say you— Ah. This is about you being macho still, right? You’re still tough to me, buddy.”  
“It’s because I can get life in jail for stealin’ something but shot for going to bed for the wrong person.”  
“Wow. Well you made this awfully heavy awfully fast. I get it; you probably have a lot of stuff to work out. But just relax for tonight, okay? Because you look great, I look great, the music’s great, and the food’s complete garbage.”  
Jigen was surprised when Lupin paid for dinner, and even more so when he was reassured that it wouldn’t be coming out of his salary. After the day he’d had, he was grateful with Lupin driving the Alfa Romeo through Paris; there was something truly calming about the lights.  
“You couldn’t be more stereotypical if you tried, couldn’t you?” Jigen couldn’t help but laugh as Lupin parked and he saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance, the Siene dividing them from it.  
“I thought you’d like it,” Lupin parked the car and stretched, and Jigen slid down in the front seat, still taking in all of the alcohol he had consumed earlier in the night. “So what’s the guy thing like, anyhow?”  
“Like the girl thing. Fun if it’s with the right person. Shit if it ain’t. Different things to play with, but same concept.”  
“Hrm,” Lupin narrowed his eyes and smirked. He leaned down to where Jigen sat, and the noises of the city stopped for Jigen when Lupin pressed his face against the gunman. His breathing stopped for a moment, and he could have sworn that his heart had followed along with it. Although that was more likely due to the heavy smoking than the kiss.  
He needed to stop putting off that doctor’s visit.  
He finally came to when he realized he was practically laying across the front seat of the car, both his and Lupin’s legs not really having the space but still trying to find the room.  
He felt a hand run through his hair, and his brain was still trying to register that this was, in fact, Lupin’s. As was the moan that he couldn’t help but return.  
“Not everything’s different. The beard’s a little weird! Also when did you get a dental bridge?” Lupin giggled when he finally parted from the gunman, rubbing his own chin and sitting up in his seat. “And look what I finally got off of you after all this time!”  
He waved around Jigen’s fedora like a victory flag, and Jigen was quick to scramble it up, grab it, and shove it back on his head to hide his stunned expression.  
“You’re not bad!” Lupin shifted the car into gear and smiled at his partner. “I’ve got one more stop for us.”

 

******  
“I figured it was a long drive back and we’d be out a while,” Lupin explained as he opened the door of the hotel room. Jigen hadn’t said much after the kiss. He’d been taking it in and reliving it, over and over again. Trying to bank it away so that it wouldn’t soon be forgotten.  
And now Jigen looked at the single hotel bed and kept staring at it. Lupin joined him and he felt a pat on his shoulder, and the thief walked past him and took a seat on it, enjoying the bounce of it.  
“I knew the manager,” he said proudly as he laid back and looked over to Jigen with a devilish grin.  
“She give you a private tour of the place?”  
“Hehe, you know it.” Lupin was immediately bouncing up on his feet again as he hurried over to the balcony, pulling back the curtains and taking in the Eiffel Tower that again served as their backdrop. “I always miss the old girl whenever I’m away.”  
“Must be good to have a place like that.”  
“Oh, you do, too. I’m sure of it. And I’ll find out what that is someday,” Lupin turned back and resumed his laying on the bed. “I say we call it a night.”  
“Agreed,” Jigen headed into the bathroom and hung the suit jacket on the back of the door, followed by his tie. All right. So his boss had made out with him in a tiny, cramped car that he was probably used as compensation. That had certainly happened. It hadn’t been bad, either… In spite of the gearshift that had dug into one of his kidneys for a majority of the time.  
He was still unbuttoning his dress shirt when he wandered back into the bedroom and found the pile of clothing on the chair where he had intended to hang his shirt. He’d been gone for five seconds, how had Lupin gotten naked, much less been able to fold everything with THAT much precision?  
“Hey, I told you I wanted to see it how you see it. That means the full deal,” Jigen was almost afraid to look over to Lupin, but slowly did so, and was relieved so see that he was at least covered up in a sheet that went up to his hip as he laid on his side in the bed.  
“You can’t be serious…”  
“Serious as that heart attack I probably gave you back in the car.”  
“Heh…” Jigen hesitated for a moment as he stood on the opposite side of the bed, his hands on his hips. “You… You sure you’re okay with somethin’ like this? With me?”  
“I just don’t want to hear about how I’m pulling your hair too much—If you’re all right with that.”  
“Uh. Yeah. Sure…”  
Jigen’s heart was indeed beating—Damn near out of his chest. He shut the shirt once more when a whistle came from Lupin, and the thief laughed.  
“Don’t take it so seriously!”  
Jigen rolled his eyes and tossed aside the shirt, and then he felt more hesitation as he placed his thumbs under the hem of his boxers before slipping them off.  
“Glad I’m not on the receiving end of that!” Lupin broke the silence, and Jigen snorted and shook his head before climbing under the sheets.  
“Huh… I’m kinda used to something being here…” Lupin admitted as he reached over and patted the gunman’s flat chest. “Well, I’ll improvise!”  
With the next kiss that followed, Jigen felt himself sliding down on the bed , not even putting up a little bit of a fight to do otherwise. He felt like such a self-conscious sap, but at the same time he loved the feeling of the familiar body against his, and that love overruled any anxiety he was having.  
“Okay, wow, so that wasn’t your gun, I’m gonna have to remember that…” Lupin muttered to himself, and Jigen realized the man on top of him was muttering a lot more than usual… Maybe he was a little nervous, or a little lost on what to do? As he caught a shake of Lupin’s usually sturdy hand, it occurred to him that this was more than a little nervous.  
Jigen shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead, hoping he wasn’t going to regret what he had to say next, “Stop…”  
“Huh?”  
“You don’t… We don’t have to do this right now.”  
“I swear I’m trying to not say anything.”  
“You’re not. You didn’t.”  
“I kind of thought you wanted…”  
“I do. Trust me I friggin’ do and I have for years. But you ain’t feelin’ it. I know when you’re trying to fake something.”  
“…I guess you have known me a while…” Lupin adjusted himself so he sat on Jigen’s hips, his hands resting on the gunman’s chest. “You want to maybe try again in a little bit?”  
“I want it to be real, not just because you wanna do a favor for a friend.”  
Lupin’s smirk was crooked, and slowly bent down and kissed Jigen atop the head, “Maybe someday I’ll be on your page. But in the meantime maybe we’ll keep it slow or as good friends who had that one night where they rolled around in bed naked for a little bit together? ”  
“…That TV get cable?”  
“I think so…” Lupin climbed off from his spot on the bed and wandered over to it, while Jigen took in the sight of the younger man in the moonlight and kicked himself for doing the right thing.  
“See if the Stanley Cup’s on.”  
“They don’t really have American sports… Oh, hey, cricket!”  
“Congrats on managing to find the ONE thing to make this situation gayer,” Jigen snorted.  
“…Cute…” Lupin returned to the bed and sat cross-legged beside Jigen, who had sat up in bed with the blankets piled around him. Lupin glanced at his friend before clearing his throat, “So do I tell you that you have a nice dick or something when this is done, or do we just cuddle for a while?”  
“You are so straight you make a flagpole look like a goddamn candy cane.”  
“Noted! I can order some food if you like, too.”  
“Please. That food at that restaurant was for goddamn elves…” Jigen muttered as Lupin brought over the menu to him. He made brief note of the fact Lupin was holding on to his free hand, and then started to flip through. “There we go; a burger.”  
“I wine you and dine you and you want a burger. This isn’t going to work if you keep coming off as ungrateful.” Lupin reached forward and pulled the phone off the nightstand, bringing it back onto the bed as he began dialing.  
“Hey, I tried to put out. You gonna put on pants for room service?”  
“Nope. How am I gonna give them the tip otherwise?”  
What followed was silence, followed by a solid minute of laughter from both men and finally a mutter from Jigen of, “…Goddamn I hate you.”  
But he really loved him in that moment.  
Jigen was startled when he first came to, not immediately recognizing the form he was curled up next to in the bed. He breathed a sigh of relief as he looked up and saw it was just Lupin, still snoring away.  
“God you’re loud…” he muttered, reaching over and pinching the snoring thief by his nose. This roused Lupin from his sleep, and he kicked and thrashed until coming to and seeing it was just Jigen next to him.  
“How you sleep with as many people as you do when—” Jigen started to reach down for his clothes when he stopped, feeling a pair of arms draping over his shoulders. He stopped and tossed the shirt back down on the floor, choosing instead to enjoy this a bit.  
“This isn’t bad either,” Lupin said more to himself than Jigen, closing in his arms and making it a full-on embrace. “So why do you wear your hair like that half the time anyway?”  
“It falls forward naturally. Can’t always get hair gel on the run. Plus you can’t tell when I’m asleep that way…. Hey, um… New York.”  
“Eh?”  
“I guess it’s my one place. Like you with the Eiffel Tower.”  
“Aw, where we first met!” Lupin chirped.  
“Don’t let it go to your head!”  
“You’re such a yandere,” Lupin snorted and sat back in the bed, bringing up the sheets around himself.  
“Yeah, well you’re a clingy pain in the ass.”  
“You love it,” Lupin winked, and Jigen scoffed at this. “You’ve had a long couple of days. How about you stay and rest up and I’ll go get us breakfast?”  
“Couldn’t you call room service?”  
“Nah. I think I scared them away last night!” Lupin chuckled and nudged the gunman. He was halfway dressed when he noted Jigen sitting on the bed, smoking and looking as though he were in deep thought. “What? That burger making you sick?”  
“It would be that fancy food if it were anything. And nah…. Just… You know I’m not good with the emotion stuff, right? So….?”  
“Hey. I know. You don’t have to go and say it, all right?” Lupin briefly brought a hand to the side of Jigen’s face as he interrupted buttoning his shirt, and brushed back some of the bangs that fell over his partner’s eyes. “I don’t want this whole thing turning you into a sap, although I think it’s a little late for that, hehe. I won’t be long, all right?”  
“Yeah… I’m gonna watch some more cricket…” Jigen muttered, although he didn’t seem happy about it.  
Lupin’s car was turning out of the parking garage of the hotel while Jigen flipped to the news and saw a live helicopter photo of a burning house. Von Dyer’s house.

******  
Zenigata wished he could have reacted more to seeing the news of the fire as he shuffled into work that morning. Instead it was met with a numb acceptance that Lupin was acting out yet again.  
He had finally gone and done it. Used one of his vacation days. It had given him ample time to delete his profile on that damned dating site for once and for all and spend the rest of the day obsessing over Lupin. Back to business and back to normal.  
What wasn’t normal was the bouquet sitting on the corner of his desk. Bright red and yellow flowers in a tall, clear glass vase. And next to it a letter neatly standing up on top of one of the many piles of paperwork in front of him.  
“I was a jerk,” he read aloud. It was handwritten in French that was shaky at best. He looked back up at the flowers, and down at the note. And then jumped back as he noticed the same group of young me from all those days before looking over at him and smirking.  
“No wonder you had to use a sick day, Koichi!” one of them exclaimed, nudging Zenigata playfully.  
“It’s Zenigata and I used a vacation day!” he snapped, sticking the card in his pocket. “I need information on Lupin’s last known location in the city. Pronto.”  
Lupin was singing to himself and checking out the magazine in his Walther to be certain it was indeed stocked while he sat pulled over on the side of the road.  
“Don’t want to go into this blind…” he muttered to himself, glancing up at his cell phone and watching it vibrate across the dash of the car. “Which one of the grumpy old men is it now?”  
“LUPIN!” came the snarl from the phone as he picked it up. It was loud enough where Lupin cringed and decided a few inches away from his ear was the best spot to hold his phone.  
“H-Hey, Zenigata….”  
“You better not be doing what I think you’re doing!”  
“Hey. I recall you telling me you’d look the other way if this guy found himself floating face-down somewhere.” Lupin reassembled his gun as he spoke to Zenigata and held it in front of himself to check the sight on it. Not bad.  
“That was with the pretense you wouldn’t go and do something bonkers like this!”  
“Aw, but I’m never tense, Zenigata! It’s cute you’re worried about me, but you don’t have to be, all right? I would just worry yourself about that nice little American hottie I heard was delivering flowers to your office a few hours ago. Good for you!”  
Zenigata made no words on his end of the lines, just a series of half-started threats and sputters. Lupin chuckled and hung up while leaving Zenigata in his state of embarrassment, and this was replaced by a huff as his cell phone was vibrating but a moment later.  
“Hello? Jigen?”  
What came next was a kick to the back of Lupin’s head, and the thief yowled and turned around to see Jigen standing there otherwise calmly, cigarette dangling in his mouth and cell phone next to his ear. He quickly tossed aside the cigarette and walked over to the still-achy Lupin, looking down at him with what Lupin thought might have been a glare. It was hard to tell under the fedora, even after all of those years.  
“I’m not some damsel in distress you know.”  
“I gathered that,” Lupin hissed. “Hey, I already have someone I play mixed signals with, you don’t have to go and be like that too!”  
“Compare me to Fujiko again and I’ll make it so you only sing soprano,” Jigen shuffled over to the other side of the car and opened the door to the passenger seat, sliding in beside Lupin and regaining his critical look. Lupin removed Jigen’s fedora from his head and put it on his own, and could see now it was definitely an annoyed glare over there.  
“Oh, hey, you wore your hair back today. Cute!”  
“Don’t go friggin’ changing the subject.”  
“Hey, people mess with my people, and I make it clear that’s not how things work! I don’t see why that’s such a big deal.”  
“Because I’m not helpless. I can handle this guy myself.”  
“You know I feel like you said that somewhere before, but it didn’t exactly work out how you planned it.”  
“Hey! Below the belt!”  
“I recall that, too,” Lupin added with a wink. Jigen returned this with a growl as he reached forward and gruffly removed the hat from Lupin’s his and shoved it back on his own. Lupin laughed and resumed his driving down the road leading out from the country and into the city. “You know I love you, but we can’t go getting into fights like this all the time when we disagree about things!”  
Jigen’s only reaction was to stare at his boss, mouth agape, “Wait. You what?”  
“Don’t act like you didn’t hear me,” said Lupin as he shifted the gears on the Alfa Romeo.  
The actors and actresses alike cringed at the string of Dutch swears and curses that were flung in them. This was followed by Von Dyer sinking down lowering in his folding chair and glowering at the cast and crew in front of him.  
“M-Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come in today, sir…” a producer finally squeaked out, and this was greeted by a cringe as Von Dyer stood and wordlessly picked up his chair, and then threw it in the direction of the producer. The man went falling down onto the floor, along with pages of the script he’d held in his hand, and barely missed the chair that soon after shattered against a wall of the soundstage.  
“We will shoot again in five minutes,” Von Dyer announced, calmly adjusting his turtleneck and wandering over to the craft table.  
The cast wasted no time scurrying into their assorted trailers, and Von Dyer found himself pacing back and forth until two of the actors walked back onto the set that was done up like a 1920s speakeasy.  
The lone actress that returned was down up in a yellow flapper outfit, complete with a bobbed haircut and a matching sequined headband. The actor that followed her was dressed in a gray, pin-striped suit and a matching gray hat.  
“Action!” Von Dyer barked, waving his hand up into the air and barely looking at the two as they positioned themselves at the bar.  
“You know… Out of everyone that comes in and out of this joint, somehow I can’t place your face…” said the actress with a level of coolness opposite of the rage moments before.  
“Never a bad thing to meet someone new, right? How about we get out of here, you and me?”  
“I would… But we’ve been had. The place is surrounded.”  
“That ain’t a coincidence, sweetheart.”  
“Wrong. Wrong. WRONG.” Von Dyer ripped what was left of his producer’s script out of the man’s hand and slammed it on the ground. “None of those lines are in this! You are not to treat it like a common piece of paperwork! Again, from the top!”  
“I somehow don’t think the union would like your treatment of your actors,” the actress chuckled, leaving the bar and sauntering over to Von Dyer. Von Dyer’s brow furrowed as he noticed a distinct drop in her registers and she spoke to him, and he found himself taking a step back. “Nor would they or the police like what I found in your house today before that mysterious fire…”  
“Y-You….”  
Lupin grinned, tearing off the mask and wig but not really seeming to mind staying in the rest of the costume. From the bar, the actor in the fedora pushed his hat down and pulled back one of the sides of his coat, revealing a magnum at his hip.  
“You kept a nice collection of guns. That’s for sure. You showed them all to my friend when you two were busy… At shooting practice. One of them matches up to bullets found in the skull of someone who owned that Welles film before you. At least that’s what the police are going to find when the complete the testing on the gun that was sent to them.”  
“You…. Bastard… All this to defend your cheap gunman?!”  
“Are you getting this?” the producer asked in a hush to the cameraman. The cameraman only nodded and moved as Lupin walked closer to Von Dyer.  
“Oh he’s cheap…” Lupin looked over his shoulder to Jigen. “…but he’s not free. Neither are my other two associates…”  
And Von Dyer turned around and saw what had once been two of the people at the craft table had shed their disguises, and now Fujiko and Goemon had a gun and sword pointed at him, respectively.  
“I’d highly suggest you turn yourself in now, while the police are one their way,” Lupin said sternly. “Don’t worry, I’m sure there will be a lot of chances for you to direct the upcoming Christmas pageant for all of the convicts who’ve shown good behavior.”  
As sirens sounded in the distance, Lupin smiled, and with a “ta-ta” he rushed away from Von Dyer, as did the other three, and towards the nearest exit. Only Jigen looked back briefly before escaping last.  
“So this is it, huh?” Jigen adjusted the reel on the projector and put out his cigarette in the nearest ashtray before joining Lupin on the couch.  
“Right! I managed to grab it, too, before that tragic accident.”  
“You don’t have to keep going on like you didn’t do it, Lupin.”  
“Just because my foot knocked over a container of gasoline I HAPPENED to have with me while I was smoking a cigar from his study doesn’t mean anything!” Lupin winked and offered up a bowl of popcorn to Jigen.  
“No thanks…” Jigen muttered, and leaned back beside Lupin. It was only then that he noticed one of the thief’s arms extended out over the back of the couch, and Lupin looked over to Jigen and winked. “Where’s Fujiko?”  
“You care?”  
“Not really. I just don’t want her to hop out all of a sudden.”  
“Aw, so shy. She had to go pick up a friend from the airport. A Masako?”  
“Masako?”  
“Nice girl. Very specific skill set.”  
“…So what’s this about, anyway?”  
“Two men who survived a war together travel the world basically raising hell… Their relationship was seen as a lit-tle too close by Hollywood censors at the time, so it was canned.”  
Jigen couldn’t help but chuckle, and Lupin gently brought his arm down so that it rested on Jigen’s shoulder.  
“Jigen… I don’t know if I can give you what you want, but I can be your friend…”  
“This is you turning me down, huh?” Jigen concluded.  
“Honestly I think I’m a little unsure!” Lupin admitted. The film was now mere background noise, and Lupin’s grin with just a little bit of unsureness what Jigen’s main focus. “I know that with Goemon it’s mainly a work relationship, and with Fujiko it’s lovers and sometimes enemies.”  
“Mostly enemies.”  
“Don’t be cruel. And I know with Zenigata we’re yin and yang. It’s almost biblical or mythical that we chase after one another. I feel like it’s a little bit harder to pin with you. I might be able to in time, Jigen, but for now I at least know I care about you. You’re the one who’s there to pick up things even when Fujiko isn’t, and that’s just not because you think I’m hot!”  
“D-Don’t give yourself too much credit! You’re the opposite of my usual type!”  
“You’re probably the one I’m closest with, and I think we’ll always have that, even if you find some quiet blond guy!”  
“Eh?”  
“That’d be the opposite of me, right?”  
“This is sounding like you giving me permission, almost.”  
“I think I might be! If I’m taking too long with things, don’t be afraid to find somebody. Just let them know I loved you first!”  
“You’re such a diva…” Jigen muttered, although he found himself leaning against Lupin as he spoke. It was all feeling like it would be going in the direction of getting shot down, even if he hadn’t been that night. Maybe Lupin was working up to it, or maybe wanted to spare his feelings after the traumatic week he’d just had. Maybe Lupin wasn’t even sure how he fully felt about the situation. And maybe he would meet someone new in the future. But for that small moment at least, watching the film in the darkened room of the hideout, he felt the peace he usually only felt next to his boss.

 

******  
“Hello?” Goemon called out as he opened the door to the hotel room. He’d received a text message from Fujiko that they had been compromised after Von Dyer’s arrest and moved to a different location, and found his own room already unlocked. There were no signs of anyone there… Anyone he knew at least.  
The shuffling sound from behind one of the bedroom doors caused him to grip on tighter to his sword and he wandered over to it from the shared room in the middle of the suite, and he took in a deep breath before slicing open the door.  
He heard a familiar beep on his phone, and pulled it out, furrowing his brow. It was a single word from Fujiko, “enjoy”. It was followed by an emoticon—Maybe a smiling one? He was never sure with those things really. Maybe it was winking. Or winking and smiling…? Was that a thing?  
He looked up and nearly fell back onto the ground as the woman who had been seated on the bed stood. She was dressed in a kimono, with her hair done up in tradition combs. With a quiet smile, she approached him.  
“You must be Ishikawa-san… I’m Masako. Our friend, Fujiko, sent for me… She said you had some business to take care of…” she took hold of one of his hands, and he didn’t stop her. He was too stunned to do much of anything, much less stop her. And on top of that… The feeling of holding hands with her was something he didn’t exactly want to stop anytime soon.  
He found himself turning bright red at this realization, “I… I um…”  
“She explained everything. Don’t worry. I specialize in this sort of thing…” she stood up on her tiptoes as she kissed him on his cheek and smiled. “We’re going to make this a wonderful evening. Now, if you’d please step this way…”

******  
For the first time he could remember, his sword fell to the ground with a clatter as he followed her.  
Shadi jumped at the sound of a knock on her apartment door, and hurried away from the pile of dirty dishes in her sink as the knock became a frantic pounding.  
The landlady? Shadi could see the small woman beating on the door feverishly as Shadi stood there, looking through the peephole.  
“Shadi! Shadi! Open up! I don’t know what you did, but the police are here!” the woman bellowed loud enough for not only Shadi to hear, but also the other people on her fifth-floor apartment floor.  
“The police?” Shadi hesitantly opened the door, and could now see, just out view of the peephole, a familiar face in a tan overcoat and hat.  
“Have you been stealing the Wifi again!?” the landlady asked her desperately.  
“N-No… I think I know what this is about…”  
“Don’t worry, ma’am. I don’t intend to make a scene,” Zenigata looked over at Shadi as he spoke these last few words, and she felt herself shirk back, using the red door of her apartment as her only armor in that moment. The landlady anxiously stepped aside as Zenigata approached the door. “…Can I come in…?”  
“It’s a mess…”  
“Shadi! Let him in! He probably has a warrant!”  
Shadi sighed and stepped back, allowing Zenigata entry. The landlady waited until the door was totally shut to lean against the door to listen closely to what was happening inside.  
“This makes my place look clean…” Zenigata admitted as he looked around at the piles of books and papers in the living room, slowly changing to a trail of clothing as the mess worked its way to the lone bedroom of the place.  
“I would’ve cleaned up but I didn’t expect to see you here… Especially you….” As Shadi spoke she rushed around her living room, hiding whatever piles she could as quickly as she could. “I saw that arrest yesterday! That big director, right?”  
“It wasn’t the fish I wanted to fry, but still a big one…” Zenigata explained, turning whichever direction Shadi moved in her cleaning frenzy. “I got your flowers.”  
“Oh? You… Knew they were from me, huh?”  
“Lupin gave me the tipoff…”  
“It’s not much, but I figured walking in with a bottle of brandy would be frowned upon there?”  
“Everyone has a bottle of something in their desk already… I don’t like being played a fool…”  
Shadi stopped her cleaning. She didn’t bother to set down the magazine in her hand, but she nodded, “I figured… You weren’t exactly in the best of spirits last time…”  
“So I don’t want you to lie to me. Never again. I’ll know.”  
“E-Eh…? So… You’re saying…?”  
“I’m saying I’m a damned good detective, so I’ll know the moment you’re not being honest. You just… Caught me in a moment of weakness, last time.”  
“That’s what you call it, heh?”  
Zenigata averted his eyes, instead focusing on a wall that was in need of washing, “I’m a workaholic and I travel a lot. My ex-wife comes out of the woodwork every few years to remind me that Lupin’s a hood by not evil.”  
“I’m a grandma and a mess of a human being. I may have also quit my job because I decided I didn’t like being mean to people like I used to.”  
“So you might need a place to stay.”  
“Possibly. I’m not lookin’ for a handout, but just until this other job goes through.”  
“What’s that?”  
“I’m thinking a receptionist for this police station?”  
“…I’ll try to write you a recommendation…”  
“Did you want to stay for dinner until then, maybe?”  
“Is your cooking anything like your housekeeping?”  
“…Ye-”  
“We’ll go out. I’ll cover this time.”  
“You don’t have to—”  
“You can pay me back when you go back to work.”  
“Gee. Thanks,” she said flatly.  
Zenigata led her out the apartment, and the neighbors all quickly shut their doors behind themselves and the detective and hopeful receptionist walked down the hall together.  
It had been years for Zenigata since he’d given someone a second chance.  
But he wasn’t above trying.


End file.
